A regulatory crackdown in the UK is washing up on US shores.
Barclays is in the process of slashing 5 percent or more of its staff worldwide, including hundreds of jobs in New York, as new CEO Anthony Jenkins prepares to unveil an overhaul of the embattled British banking giant next Tuesday.
Barclays, which acquired the core of Lehman Brothers during the financial crisis of 2008, has already axed droves of staffers in the past few days. Yesterday, it filed a notice with the state that it was eliminating 275 staffers at its Manhattan offices at 200 Park Ave., 745 Seventh Ave. and 1301 Avenue of the Americas.
Jenkins is expected to provide more details on his revamp when the firm reports its fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 12.
The painful cuts, which have been working their way through the bank in other countries, began in earnest in New York on Monday and Tuesday, sources said.
Barclays’ layoffs are likely to play out in multiple rounds, which has caused a lot of hand-wringing among the rank and file, who have been bracing for cuts for months. The layoffs come just as workers are preparing to learn their bonuses.
Options Group, a recruiting firm, said it has received at least 30 résumés from Barclays in the past few days alone — more than any other bank.
“For Barclays, it’s quite unnatural to get rid of people at this time of the year, after they’ve paid out bonuses,” said Michael Karp, co-founder of Options Group.
The Wall Street layoffs may be the worst since UBS and Citi announced plans to slash tens of thousands of workers several months ago.
Barclays could slash as many as 400 to 500 investment fixed-income bankers, sources said.
Oxford University-educated Jenkins, who took the reins of the bank a little over four months ago, hails from the bank’s consumer retail-banking operations — an unseen piece of the bank’s business in the US, where it does not have bank branches.
Many observers believe that Jenkins may steer the firm toward safer, more staid retail-banking businesses in order to appease UK regulators miffed over Barclays’ role in an interest-rate rigging scandal.
Former CEO Bob Diamond stepped down in August after Barclays agreed to pay $430 million to settle allegations that its traders helped manipulate a key benchmark interest rate known as Libor.
The 51-year-old Jenkins has voiced support for maintaining the bank’s investment-banking business, which Diamond bolstered through the Lehman acquisition.